Thread: 7mm rem mag relaodimg recipe

Hi all, I have bought a tikka t3x 7mm rem mag , and have bought all the components to reload for it.
I will be using ar2217 powder, 162gr ELDX projectiles.

I know that the amount of powder to load is roughly between 65-70 grains.

But I was wondering if anyone who is using the same powder and projectiles, has an exact number of how many grains of powder to load , as I am only home for 3 days over Christmas where all my reloading gear is , and I won’t have time to be heading out to the range and testing a bunch of different loads.
Cheers!

Exactly between 65 and 70 grains. Each rifle is individual...each rifle likes things differently. Far better to have a safe mild loads that work and you know are ok.vs hot rodding on someone else's recipe and being unsure if it's safe .

I’d go as far as 68-72.


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I have 2 7 remmags here and with 2217 and the 162 one will happily digest 71.8 and the other tops out at 69 and only 65fps slower both are rem 700s .
Completely different story with 2225 .

Don't take any short cuts mate, just load a ladder from smallest to largest charge in half grain increments to find out where you're going to run into pressure. That's range trip one. Then load a few at the charge weight half a grain and a whole grain below pressure and shoot for groups. If that's all you have time for then that'll see you right.

Any cartridge can have significant variations in case capacity between brands and batches, batches of powder can vary a bit too so don't take anyone's exact charge weight and load that up.

Start low and work up but you don't have to take several trips to do this. The above will also show you if that combo is going to work in your rifle.

Greetings @CP270,
The 7mm Rem Mag is noted for wide swings of velocity and pressure between rifles as @deye223 mentions above. Load data has been reduced over the years to account for this so varies widely. H1000 aka AR2217 has been made by two different manufacturers. So it is impossible to recommend a load that will work in all rifles. Other than working up looking for "pressure signs" it is probably better to work up to a velocity at least that is what I do these days.
GPM.

like everyone else says work up your load
with something big like 7mm rem mag I typically work in 1gn steps for example ive just done load development (if you can call it that) in my new Tikka 7mm rem mag a couple of weeks ago

I'm using 2225 and a 162gn edlx loaded at mag length (3.334" in my rifle)
Adi state 69gn min
73.5 max
I started 71 (I know from experience this is a safe starting point in a tikka) and I'm not interested in the lower end for a hunting rifle
I loaded 3 rounds at 71 3 at 72 and 3 at 73 (0.5 below Adi max because it is slightly compressed in my brass already at 73.0)

i settled on 73.0 which for 3 shots only was 2840fps (20in barrel) and had an es of 10fps and shot all 3 touching at 100m
now if i fired a 5 or 10-round group that probably would have opened up a bit but quite frankly I don't care
this rifle will be zeroed for max PBR and will be essentially point-and-shoot from 25-300m
velocity spread doesn't matter too much at those ranges and even if the group was 1.5"@100 it is still plenty good enough for the job well
people get too caught up on the accuracy of hunting rifles unless you extend the shots beyond 300m sub moa groups just aren't a requirement

Originally Posted by grandpamac

Greetings @CP270,
The 7mm Rem Mag is noted for wide swings of velocity and pressure between rifles as @deye223 mentions above. Load data has been reduced over the years to account for this so varies widely. H1000 aka AR2217 has been made by two different manufacturers. So it is impossible to recommend a load that will work in all rifles. Other than working up looking for "pressure signs" it is probably better to work up to a velocity at least that is what I do these days.
GPM.

what do you mean by two manufacturers Adi makes 2217 and it is repacked and sold as H1000 same as 2225 and Retumbo same stuff different label

Probably....it WAS made by two different companies.

Originally Posted by rambo-6mmrem

what do you mean by two manufacturers Adi makes 2217 and it is repacked and sold as H1000 same as 2225 and Retumbo same stuff different label

Initially H1000 was made by Nobels in Scotland. This continued for a while after the other Hodgdon stick powders started to be made by ADI. Around 2000 ADI started making H1000 which they called AR2217. About this time the speed of some of the other ADI powders were changed to better line up with the Hodgdons existing powders. Some got new numbers and suffixes and some did not. AR 2208 was the only one that stayed the same. and was introduced as Varget. I said has been made not is made.
GPM

@CP270 may want to revise your approach a bit there. There is no such thing as all Tikkas will like 66gr, Brownings 67gr, Sakos 68gr etc... It just doesn't work like that.

Do a work up from low to high ideally with a chrono so that you can stop when you reach top book velocities for your bullet/powder combo. You don't have to shoot heaps of rounds doing this as you're just establishing where a safe limit is. Back off a bit from it and see how it shoots.

Bad juju in blindly trusting someone else to tell you what will be safe in your gun. You have to be diligent and do the testing yourself. It's not onerous.

Originally Posted by grandpamac

Initially H1000 was made by Nobels in Scotland. This continued for a while after the other Hodgdon stick powders started to be made by ADI. Around 2000 ADI started making H1000 which they called AR2217. About this time the speed of some of the other ADI powders were changed to better line up with the Hodgdons existing powders. Some got new numbers and suffixes and some did not. AR 2208 was the only one that stayed the same. and was introduced as Varget. I said has been made not is made.
GPM

Ok we are talking pretty historical here which is why I didn’t pick up on it i was 11 years old when noble stopped making it
I think it’s pretty safe to assume that any H1000 arround these days is relabelled 2217
Especially since any new powder on the market is going to be adi made
I personally wouldn’t use 23 year old powder anyway ( I know if stored correctly it’s ok but how can you Guarantee that unless you have had it from new)

I thought you meant currently in production with two Manufacturers meaning batch to batch consistency could be a bit all over the place

Personally if you want to load up a bunch without testing (not really suggested)
But from 17 years of reloading what i would do is oal to fit the mag (just)
In my tikka rem mag that’s 3.334” (probably pretty similar with all OEM tikka factory mags)
And use 1gn under max load (book)
In your case that’s 69gn with the 162edlx

I don’t suggest doing this mainly because you don’t know if you’re rife with like it
Will be a piss off if it’s a 4” group

However I would find it very unlikely that you would see any sort of pressure problems at a gn under max
I don’t generally see anything concerning until 3-4 gn over max which most rifles
The book data is quite low especially adi’s book data

Greetings All,
After the discussion on the 7mm Rem Mag and H1000/ AR2217 I remembered a Propellant Profiles article in Handloader from the early 1990,s by G Sitton. The article stated that H1000 had been introduced in 1989 with the first data becoming available in 1992. Initially H1000 was thought of as a specialist long range target powder for 1000 yard shooting. I remembered that the data was hot and was not disappointed. The start load was above current max loads for the same projectile weights with velocities to match. It is no secret that when we moved to electronic pressure measuring systems that some cartridges, 7mm Rem Mag and .243 included showed wide variations in pressure in both different and the same rifles. For this reason the effected cartridges had their pressure limits lowered to stop handloaders blowing up rifles as far as this is possible. Out of interest I adjusted the 1993 start load velocity down to the current max. It worked out to be close to the same so it appears that the current H1000 is close to the original and it is the pressure limit that differs.
Regards GPM.

I’ve always been under the understanding that the pressure variations seen across 7RM loads has been due to brass capacity differences more than anything else.


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